the maine went down in savannah harbor and we went to war in april of 1898 with spain and then we won puerto rico, the philippines had control over cuba and so on. we salvage some of the items from the maine the next year and then in 1910 started to bring up the maine and in 1912 after taking off all the items the sailors that were still -- towed it out get in a very solemn ceremony. a number of the items came to the smithsonian. one of them where the steering wheel of the maine and george washington's uniform was regarded at the time in the early 1900s as this great symbol of the american nation and of course your member at the time, remember the maine was the same so it really precipitated the war. the bugle as you can see is a lovely artifact because this was at the bottom of havana harbor harbor -- so it looks like something you may dredge up and in your imagination it almost looks like a type of -- or something but really this is a piece of history. this is a piece of history with taps playing. this really takes you right there to that moment. >> richard kurin, 101 objects in american history the book available at the smithsonian gift shop amazon and american bookstores. type these items together for us. >> was trying to create a narrative of american history, something that would provide any american away in. you don't have to be at thd in history to understand history. you can be a newcomer but i try to tell the stories about these objects, give objects that are very accessible to us. you look at an object and you say why was that big and who made it and how did they wear it? how did they use it? why did it come to the smithsonian? why do we put it in a casing and why is it important? the object is a wonderful and easy way into history and understanding it. and a whole list of objects in the smithsonian so people could use the book and get a sense of who we are as americans. >> "the history of america in 101 objects" is the name of the book undersecretary of the smithsonian richard kurin is the author. >> the proceeds will go to the smithsonian so we are grateful to the american people for their support of the museums every day and this book helps us out. .. of philanthropy, and they believe that he wrote the will in 1826. they believed that the american people in combining a democratic spirit with the idea pursuing knowledge and distributing knowledge among its people, that that was a great recipe for a progressive and humane society. i think he was right. his gift and legacy was the smithsonian, available to 0 million businesses a day, here in washington and new york and online to hundreds of millions more. we're very proud of keeping that >> [applause] thank you for coming out tonight. i know it is a friday night and it is miami. [laughter] there is plenty of times to get to the clubs on the beach. [laughter] "ping pong dilpomacy" as just said it is an extraordinary moment 1971 when this antagonism that existed 22 years between china and the united states fractured a and it all seemed to happen in the blink of an eye in the story goes the ping-pong players that started the process suppress loved it because it was the of spontaneity and almost too good to be true the story of a young american who befriends a young chinese and to gather this process literally changes the world. if you know, anything about "ping pong dilpomacy" that is probably what you know, . is a pack of lies. [laughter] pitfalls in the league into what everyone wanted you to know with the nixon inherited and into the mao narrative but that is not the full story in this book is the full story. i want to start off at the beginning and present three different video ads that are different but will be connected. if you could imagine the of downton abby setting. [laughter] of a young boy for five years old will be a communist revolutionary but at the moment dressed in a black velvet suit with pretty silk and patent leather shoes here and trying to get to the window but his nanny is holding him back in kensington trying to cover his head. but he knows someone special is coming to tea. the princess of wales. he is very excited because he knows there will be goldman carriages and 12th white horses so he rushes downstairs and sees his mom and dad and this woman comes in wearing a brown dress they have t. then she's getting into a motor car then he says where is the princess? and she says that was the of princess and he feels a deep disappointment. that will be returned when the princess of wales becomes the queen and she will write a note of condolence because he is done something unforgivable that he mary's to class's believe him and the headline sweeps the nation perrin's son weds secretary even on the front page of "the new york times." it was that much of a shock. now the second to vignettes is too, 40 old men there is a case if with the ping-pong table in the 1930's. one of them has a slightly withered arm and as if he broke it in the fourth cpac accident, the daughters say the best thing you could do was play ping-pong every day of your life even stranger that cave is literally shaking. the third vignettes imagined in american hippie and out of a hotel not just in any hotel but just to the side of the evidence where the first one that ever stepped in to try it escapes with one friend they break away the crowd starts to follow them. him and his friend decided since everything is communist what they will do is just barrault a bike. you can tell the crowd does not like it then the crowd starts to move toward them so they dumped the by can run back to the hotel. those three vignettes is the beginning and is the middle and the end of the diplomacy and it will show us how political this game was from its berth which is something nobody knew in 1971 or has spoken about since then. that first young boy who becomes a communist revolutionary is the honorable i've been montagu. said two chinese men is the future premier at that time the american is a young free spirit born in california not doing much of anything besides getting into ping-pong somehow is invited to join the american team for the zero world champions in japan then two days later he is a spontaneous diplomat who is roped into beijing and is front-page news on every loose paper in the world in the '70s. i will talk about this. i don't think we have to concentrate very hard to know that china has come a long way as a sign of this relationship is more important than ever. is the only country with the template. they have been there before up until the 1800's china was the richest nation in the world and had done for a long time. it is hard to imagine other empires recovering any time soon. you cannot see athens getting itself together or rome coming back or even england has much of a hope in hell either. [laughter] but the chinese has been here before. they have made a lot of mistakes getting back on their feet again most of those but they were on the right road to generally although there are still some problems. a lot of chinese tensions if somebody tells you there is a whole industry of commentators and authors to make a living off of what might happen in it is only possible because we just don't know the best is if you take two titles a and squeeze them together what we know is what squeezes out along the side. but if this relationship is so important and all the nation's tight maneuvers around japan, korea, taiwan japan, korea, taiwan, we have treaties with them. just to complicate the chinese told 1.2 trillion dollars of our debt. it is a very important relationship so maybe it is worthwhile to have the first look at how this relationship started 1971. the real question is, with ping-pong diplomacy this thought occurred to me in 2008 when my in-laws were kind enough to invite me to beijing to the olympics i was wandering around i was looking at it be played so seriously. what you realized it was about gold and nationalism. and if you are a journalist when you walked into sees stadiums you are given papers just in case you want to write about uganda. the very first fact on that page is every week in china 300 million people will play ping-pong at least once. view of ever been to china china, it is the top down country not bottom up. so that means someone at some time made the decision to tell everybody to play ping-pong. [laughter] it is a very strange idea but it is true. think of all the things they tell them they could be sharpshooters or weight lifters but it is ping-pong. why? the english love their sports. the height of the english empire they were codifying index boarding sports of the incredible rate from soccer to rugby to hockey to cricket these are all english sports but chinese concentrated on pingpong. i asked someone how did that happen? it all starts with with montagu. sweptback i started to dig how on earth did he get to china? what is going on? the first thing i found out about montagu he was a son of barry and swayed the is a very noble family relatively new family in the third son the youngest son of three. the least popular. he had a very, very rich childhood very much like downton abby and he reacted against his family very young. when he was 13 he fought defended shot and wells to talk about socialism. by the time he was 18 he decided he should take a step further to become a communist. but he started to earn a living was in films the very first director was alfred hitchcock. he started producing films for hitchcock. at that time when you turn 21 in england you were finally allowed to travel without parental permission. he got on the train to moscow and is staffed by russian intelligence services as a son of a parent. he is sent back to london. he leaves again they ask him to come and work secretly for the of comintern which is the communist international that has a precise mandate to bring communism to infiltrate foreign countries through culture. montagu had an opportunity to do this through phnom. he is doing alfred hitchcock's by movies but hitchcock has no idea his producer is a spy. [laughter] but this goes on five or six really good movies like 39 steps. i will give you one quick short story what of a typical week in his life, he could move so quickly through social circles it was remarkably blunt dash remarkable. his other hobby was ping-pong. he was probably the only person that had enough money to start the federation he gets the international table tennis federation going when he is 20 to start having will to kinships on his way he decides to write a letter to drop in on trotsky. he already had a split and was living in exile in turkey and very worried about being assassinated as he was ultimately but he let in this young aristocratic englishman. he has no idea he is a spy. they set up all night to talk politics at the end of the evening trotsky confesses he is worried he could be assassinated at any moment and hands montagu loaded pistol. we know that he was not a killer. he went fishing and almost drowned then continues on to a ping-pong tournament. a very normal week. the use of the people who he dines with. fdr, the prime minister, a king of england, a charlie chaplin, alfred hitchcock hitchcock, it is remarkable in reading through this it is almost comedic but nobody ever talks about montagu because there is no one that he does not know. when world war ii starts, he is an england but now the russians need him for something more dangerous than they want him to start spying for the of giu military intelligence gathering that makes the kgb look like chicken feed and that happens to be a very high-ranking source. so he becomes the superstar of the soviets during the mid 40's. after the war ends it goes back to the common terms and there is an amazing coincidence that mao takes over china in an montagu has someone who likes the game of ping-pong in charge of the most populist nation on earth. he realizes culture, sports, communism this is perfect for her montagu. he gets on the plane and tries to sell the chinese on the idea that ping-pong would make a fantastic national sport. it seems preposterous he tried this in russia and it did not work but he tries again and to his surprise the chinese think it is a pretty good idea. they run with it through the fifties they don't want to come out and play yet because they want to come out and win. not to represent themselves week. they put on what a state money into it and get better and better. with the 1950's is about the only thing say are successful at is ping-pong and win their first gold medal. the rest of the country is the absolute disaster. montagu has another friend who is one of the great soviet peasant scientist who had this wonderful idea that all seeds were like communistic you sprinkle them close to gather there would only strengthen together and grow if you no agriculture that is probably the worst idea in the history of agriculture. [laughter] sure enough, all of this fails dramatically across china. montagu supports the idea idea, mao supports the idea they try to industrialize at a rapid rates everybody throws every steel thing they have a and the country fails. if you believe the chinese statistics 70 million people died between 1958 and 61 the most recent statistics by a historian the number is actually 44 million that would mean if you left tomorrow morning from miami to go to washington d.c. the would not see one person on your entire walk. montagu wanted to do his bit it he offered the chinese the chance to host the first ever world championship in table tennis that they could show themselves in a good light. it seemed like a nice idea but because it is such a disaster it is a vital opportunity for the government to show that things are just kinda thank you very much. they decided to invite in foreign jordan -- journalist with officials and they pull that off. the baron does not think much of anything but sometimes propaganda is not about shouting lies from the rooftops sometimes it is hiding the truth. the fact that nobody do 44 million people had died was remarkable. but these young men in and win in -- within now with chairman mao been a practice session you did not want to disappoint him some of them cracked but many others continued they become absolute superstars they get to go on holiday with the revolutionary leaders they get to get coal made dumplings they have a great time. the other thing that happens is they are used as diplomats mao decided he does not like the way the cold war is going that it is divided between the united states and russia. why shouldn't china be the developing nations? so he sends the ping-pong players out across the world through africa and asia to be the spearhead for the diplomats to follow and many officials to travel with them our diplomats in disguise. this is working really well until the mid-60s when mao is a challenge for leadership and he unleashes the cultural revolution on china. just when things are starting to come back to normal after the famine whole country is turned upside down again. he takes the young and turns them against the old and tells them it is there a time to be revolutionaries as well it is still possible to practice revolution against your elders. anyone who is tied to the elders is in trouble. that means anyone who has had any success at in anything so they were persecuted horribly so people had heads shaved and tortured so badly that three commit suicide. even the people who brought the most sporting glory to china and here they are and one was beaten to death. it is a very sad story. at the end of the '60s mao has his country in a pickle he has upset things domestically but during the cultural revolution he mr. every ambassador he had from the world so nobody would is going on in china does not know what is going on around the world. said he is trying to break out from where he is. this is extraordinary. he decides in order to triangulate the world to play on the same stage as russia and america he will pick a fight so on a the northern border for the chinese ambushed russian patrol and this escalates very quickly and within one weeks we'll have 1 million russian troops on the chinese border it is a real this calculation mao decides to turn things up one notch he has two nuclear tests of the fallout goes over the russians. they are mad and go straight to washington d.c. and asked america to greenlight a nuclear attack on china. which of course, they do not because the light bulb goes off is kissinger and nixon thinking this is something we could exploit. this is good news. of course, mao is thinking something not entirely different. he asks his daughter of a little. what you do with all your neighbors hate you? india, we launched a war against them, the taiwanese, japanese, the russians to the north. what do do? he said we should do what the ancestors recommended to reach across the ocean to the americans. -- of the running dogs of capitalism against everything they have been told 20 years but mao is very comfortable he is game to try to reach out to america. meanwhile nixon and kissinger are looking for channels to reach to china. they finally find pakistan to pass hand written notes that take three weeks across the world back-and-forth and things are looking pretty good. 1970 and then mao his next move was so settled nobody recognized it. he put no left-wing american journalist it was a brilliant sign to be picked up by the cia and foreign services and nixon would understand it is the important message but now -- mao but he was working for the cia. but this journalist was so left-wing nobody noticed. so he continues with the vietnam war and starts to bomb the ho chi minh trail so they say what kind of signal is that? so now there is total silence. >> host: t needs to come up with is a signal so glaringly obvious so smacking in the face obvious nobody could get it wrong and this is widely used ping-pong. so suddenly there is a job to do here is to coordinate this whole thing to position it so now he has to get a team to the world championships. one problem they're all in all countries did not have diplomatic relations. so he has to jump through several hoops and gets permission to go to japan and since the team but that team is so terrified having been terrorized and nobody wants to go but in the and they don't have a choice and mao writes a great note to say that not every baby may come home we may lose a few but they should go any way. they get to japan. know they have to reach out to the americans. you have an incident where days but this hippie who gets on the bus. in theory they have a nice chat and are invited to china and these pingpong players to open diplomatic relations with chinese. not true. the chinese have their own bus cover their own practice stadium and hotel. they wait to. they have scope to mount. he is the friendly hippie who already tried to practice with them earlier in the week. they knew exactly who he is. his ego is so large faith -- she thinks is because he is such a great player being he is ranked about 14th best in the world. the last thing they need is his table tennis advice. he was waived on to the bus there is a famous moment he is given a smokescreen portrait. that alone says a lot they are very precise about their gift-giving. there is a store in china if you were on a diplomatic mission you would meet with the ambassador in a couple of secretaries and picked from the right to your. ♪ confessed i had to pick something nice because i gave it to an american. not a coincidence. this was what they set up to get americans into beijing. they are a diverse group. black, white, latin, high-sc hool girls, i am engineers engineers, a guy from the u.n.. they all landed tea and a minsk where they have 36 hours. this takes the world by a storm he actually had the gall to contact in your times to cover the championships and they're laughing and now they are begging him it is a huge thing but imagine someone on that team is carrying a large stashes drugs is about to declare his deep love of mao and communism as the entire world is watching nixon and kissinger are having conniptions the have been practicing secret diplomacy now here they are they don't know what is happening. locally he knows he is doing because the story runs four weeks for the gold between the two countries. with his counterpart and brotherly love because it prevents the else has the same end came which has upset the russians the more the each country can do more likely they will come back to the bargaining table. so russians were loving the down and thought it could go on forever. so that gives the vermis amount of mouth for public support in dixon says they always tell you what you are thinking. but with this meticulous manipulation of the tiniest details is most remarkable everyone was bamboozled. taiwanese, japanese, russians and that really means the whole world has changed. but this all started with montagu ping-pong in the soviet union down his own game has been used to conspire against russia and guess where we are today? much more in that direction than anything montagu could imagine. thank you. [applause] >> he will take some questions this is not project into the room but it is important for the internet. please raise your hand. >> what inspired your research for this story? >> it was a mixture of going to beijing to wonder why it was happening also information that it chooses of the gain a i pitched as a book and considering this took me four years thank god i did not sell the other one. [laughter] even with the name montagu i first heard that day with my dad. it was actually my father's best friend and he had never been allowed to meet his uncle his whole life. but now they know why. [laughter] so i have to go to london in and have seven members of the montagu family. [laughter] >> with "the new york times" you mentioned 1972 the table tennis team was in the united states that nixon decided to bomb the harbor at the time? was a political point? >> but this return trip was very important and i don't know why of the timing but it was smacked on day number two is terribly embarrassing situation. this creates real outrage. but they were told to keep a poker face a matter what happens in with establish human rights in china but i think for out of six does not show what. some of the actually talk to the chinese. it was extremely awkward. >> tell us about their research process of china. how did you find your subjects or gain access interview? >> had i really know what this book would entail i am not sure would have written it. i was very naive the asking people in interviews and tried to do the same as other countries but it wasn't. i stupidly forgot just because you are retired as an athlete 30 or 40 years ago still does not mean that you were not managed and a living presence in the government quarters. said every single person who played in china or 61 or 71 are taken care of so i have to go through the sports ministry and it took a very long time and i had to submit of lots of papers to get permission and in the end they gave me permission. i did not lie. kim was pretty darn honest more than i was with my publisher. [laughter] what was fascinating was fed different reactions some of the older ones that was still taking their pension was very open and told me some extraordinary stories. but some of the of ones who stayed in had gotten to a high level i would get three word answers to questions. but generally i was amazed how kind the players were. >> this seems very interesting that they had emitters diplomats that that was a way to reach out. was there a backup plan? what is that had failed? >> there were many ways. blind, the most obvious was the american team the only thing for them to do was to say are we allowed into china? the chinese have just changed their tactics. they changed the rules just before it was issued but they were really lucky when they bring the embassy in tokyo the man who picked up the phone was extremely bright and wonderful called bill cunningham. he has a mind like a steel trap and remembered in a foreign policy report several hundred pages long, there was one line that said athletic exchanges could begin. the last thing he wanted to do was to get state department approval so he could not say yes. he has to say you were individuals for key word american state department has nothing to do with it. you can go. they think it is a huge process -- a process so they take their passports but it is justified by the decision were coming in to communist china but it was that fragile. he was the master on his side but it did require a little on the american side. i think there would have been another plan that we will never know. it is probably somewhere in the archive they have not released yet. >> for the research process were you aware of the soviet process of the chinese and americans that they did try to convince the japanese? >> i found out a lot along the way. i did not know that much history from the russian side at the time. did not know about the nuclear standoff had gone all the way to washington. as the russian defense minister wanted to press the button. rethink the cuban missile crisis was the closest but this was really close to the point as a campaign in china in 1969 every city of china and joe was convinced the entire population was underground. it was one hell of a campaign. this remarkable staying and it was fun to read the russian telegrams with the ping-pong players. you have never seen so many hysterical ambassadors a kid your life. they're all taking meetings with their american counterparts saying you cannot trust the chinese. whenever you do. do not trust the chinese. kissinger is reading the reports and loving it. he thinks it is brilliant. the russians had been so entrenched in the two years before that tried to get into nuclear arms talks talks, they had no interest in vietnam ending so this was a total game changer. >> i am curious of when it you right to. what is the moment i have something good and the moment you want to throw it into the garbage? >> the first draft when your honor roll and things are looking great but though low is when your editor havens you back that first draft. [laughter] in this case i handed a 500 page book you will see it has come out 295 pages. that is a lot of chopping. not so much that but it means you have wasted a lot of weeks and months of your life but yet you cannot write it unless you know, it and it falls by the wayside. about two 3% of your research counts but you don't know what is why until your editor starts to tell you. the good thing is a company like simon schuster, they are very good at what they do. you can be of little petulant but i am grateful to it did turn out into a book. >> as a novelist, why did you choose. [inaudible] >> if i fictionalize if i could not sell at. it was too preposterous. [laughter] come on. i remember my first meeting with my agent and was trying to find a new agent. you want something solid and i have got this idea about international relations and espionage and table tennis. [laughter] you say table tennis and eyebrows rise up. but this story is so bizarre and montagu is such a strange character i don't have the imagination to make up montagu. >> do you think nobody talks about a because results were achieved or because they were concealed or do you expect your book to have an impact now? >> that is a good question. the remarkable thing is the way she compartmentalized information. even on the bus where the incident happened cover the rest of the team did a not know what was going on. when the american hippie walks on the bus during the revolution, the people were killed for a lot less than saying hello to an american. but the one guy was the team captain, he made a career out of the moment mao loved him so much he is not just a good table tennis player also a diplomat and he makes him a member for the people's congress and ultimately as part of the central committee minister of sports and culture but unfortunately she befriends mao wife and is rumored to be her lover. when mao falls and mao dies he is arrested everybody thinks he has been executed he spends two years in prison in 10 years in exile as a street sweeper. probably the most fit famous man in china. he only died last year. occasionally he would let a little thing slap -- slip but forget about all the changes through china but once he was diagnosed with cancer many things he could have done but he tried to walk back to that revolutionary base one neighbor down to the last 1,000 men. i think compartmentalized -- compartmentalize asian was the answer >> based on the research said you did i do see the relationship with the u.s. to get insights on how they think? >> many people could answer that question better than me but i will give you my impression. i have been in china in another role as well where i could sit down with people fairly up the food chain with the foreign ministry and the sayings that has always amazed me is how our sense of history compared to their sense of history and what is remembered and what is an end. there is a lot of things we don't learn but very deeply culture in chinese but the last 180 years has been a blip of the ongoing success story. but those things mark twain and deeply with the british did was extremely cynical putting opium up and down the rivers and then the french were not far behind and the russians and germans and americans it is a hard thing to for give and a world war ii really starts china with the japanese invading and it is the brutal occupation and that does not end and tell hiroshi my. the -- hiroshima. and i would cast somewhere there is probably a map of china at a very healthy stage veba by to get back and i think they would do it very slowly and steadily as you can see if you look at the maniacal gambles that mao took they are a long way from that. they are aware of their own problems. they have a lot of problems to solve before they can start to exercise their power. so we are a long way away by the japanese economy's. >> you mentioned how preposterous it was to make up the characters such as montagu i am just curious they were on cnn saying dennis rodman he cannot make this up as well. is there another sport you could write about? [laughter] >> very funny. there is jerry crazy stories as well. that is a great basketball story about frankenstein and hitler but i will say that. dennis rodman i kind of feel bad for him in the end. i think he says i am practicing diplomacy but the big difference is ping-pong diplomacy had a huge framework behind it of political good will. and a very active framework. that does not exist. the chinese are very busy to use send positive signals the whole year. we did not get them all. they actually released a dying priest in 1971 as a signal the you compare that to north korea, that would be that easy low hanging fruit to show political goodwill but it has not have been. i am afraid what dennis rodman is up to is more about reviving his own career than anything else. >> thank you. [applause] at the time the cia had really taken a beating. they had been through grueling hearings before congress of the lew should be blamed for 9/11 and if the cia failed to do share information or name individuals with the fbi that may have foretold of or allowed them to investigate the plot of land 11. -- 9/11. the cia was buffeted by these particular hearings then denied a loving commission came along with another set that were very, very tough. the chair above the net 11 commission the staff statements what happened was is the indictment of the agency's performance. a second factor that occurred that contributed to this momentous change of defense was that night 11 commission itself as a group of nationally prominent men and women who could build a national audience through a series of incidents of 9/11 they had a lot of cachet a and influence and they constructed their own strategy to build a legislative proposal that could be acted on very swiftly. the third factor at the time was coming into stark relief this summer of 2004 the cia report came out and faulted groupthink and assess caa was at a very low level of prestige at the time. you have to know the presence of the nine levin commission family became quite a powerful special interest group advocating for reform and was able to have tremendous influence over the process. the conventional wisdom is we created a national counterterrorism center because of the presidential election of 2004 that conventional wisdom is a little bit wrong but i think the polluting presidential election that the performance of george bush if he made the country safer were undoubtedly incredibly powerful factors that influence the likelihood of congress and the president to take on intelligence reform. but it is not the only factor. there was exhaustion with the cia we had to attacking their failures in the same two or three year period. what did the commission recommends? of a director of national intelligence, a superpower spy master who have the ability to increasingly complex world be able to with the 9/11 commission we need a quarterback who could move dollars, people come in and in the last to meet new threats and organize quickly what they determined was perhaps a more greater intelligence than the soviet union had been. the soviet union at least in the intelligence cents there were embassies from which to recruit spies and armaments and other particular government each and agencies to intercept a communication but this was not the case with the terrorist cells we need to organize differently. with a particular impact impact, said john carry the democratic nominee -- nominee endorse the recommendations 70 minutes after the commission was announced july 2004. george bush in concept 10 days later this speaks to the force that was at play at this particular time. however, while a lot of members of congress and the two leading individuals endorsed the recommendations immediately it inspired tremendous democratic opposition and this is the heart of the book, its tail of bureaucratic power jockeying for influence over the $80 billion to control the intelligence assets of united states. >> guest: and then finally, there is a public policy implication for your presentation of the black tradition of arms. so i look forward to really getting into those three areas with you. but before i was interested in hearing from you a little wit about your background -- a little bit about your background and how did you arrive at this topic. >> guest: sure. well, happy to be here, and i think your sense about the way the book